Website helps students decide of professors

The website Ratemyprofessors.com allows users to see students’ ratings of professors, but students can’t trust everything they read online.

Ratemyprofessors.com, a nationwide database of colleges and instructors, is considered the largest online resource for professor ratings.

More than 15 million students have rated professors on this website that has about 8,000 colleges available, and about four million students use the website each month.

According to the website, RateMyProfessors helps college students find out who’s a great professor and who’s one a student should avoid.

“It’s a preview into each teacher’s classroom through the eyes of their students,” student Jessica Tidwell said. “The insight it offers is one of the main ways I determine my classes. I love that website.”

When students view ratings of professors, it’s broken into the following categories: easiness, helpfulness, clarity and rater interest. Students also can check a professor’s overall rating.

The website allows students to read comments from their peers, which provides them with more details about the class. The comments help students judge whether a class or professor is suited to their learning style and ability.

Anyone can submit a review, which could lead to some misleading information on the website. For example, one student may post a scathing review about the professor when the student was the one who didn’t put in the effort. Often, professors have a mix of positive and negative reviews, which can be confusing.

“There are more negative comments than positive comments for the professors because people are more likely to go on and write negative comments than to write glowing reviews,” student Crystal Ho said. “It can be a good resource, but it also can be bad.”

Several professors teaching at Pierce College Puyallup are not listed on the website while others have few reviews. Although some professors are not listed, any user has the opportunity to add professors and rate them.

Despite the few drawbacks, the RateMyProfessors can be helpful and is easy to access. Users have the option to search by professors or schools, or they can access specific colleges by clicking on a state and finding their college on the list.

Pierce College is divided into two groups: Pierce College Joint Base Lewis-McChord and Pierce College (all). Once one of those is selected, an overall rating of the college professors is available along with comments focused on the campus. Below that is a list of all the professors, which can filtered by department, last name and various categories such as easiness.

The Puyallup Post is the award-winning student news of Pierce College Puyallup in Puyallup, Washington. Copyright The Puyallup Post 2017. Twitter/Instagram @puyalluppost